Mae was right about me.
The admission settles into my body without resistance, sinking through the layers of denial and deflection I have spent years constructing until it reaches the foundation and finds a space that was waiting for it. She was right about the silence being its own language. Right about complicity wearing the mask of neutrality. Right about the damage caused by standing in the presence of cruelty and choosing comfort over conscience.
And maybe the universe has been trying to teach me this for a while.
Maybe the loneliness I have been running from, the hollow ache that drove me to chase Rafe's approval and tolerate his cruelty and fill every quiet moment with noise and company and the shallow performance of belonging, was never the enemy. Maybe it was the lesson. The universe's way of sitting me down and saying, you need to figure out what you actually want. Not what Rafe tells you to want. Not what the team expects you to want. Not what the Alpha playbook prescribes for a twenty-two-year-old man with a roster spot and a reputation to maintain.
What I want.
My likes. My interests. The things that make Cal Whitmore a person rather than a position on someone else's roster.
This is my shot to figure that out. To stop defining myself through proximity to louder, more confident people and start excavating the version of me that exists underneath the performance. To discover what I care about when no one is watching. What I choose when the pressure to conform is removed. Who I am when the only person I need to impress is sleeping on my chest with her fingers curled against my heartbeat.
I press my lips to the top of Mae's head.
The contact is featherlight. Barely a whisper of pressure against her dark hair, carrying no expectation and no agenda, just the impulse to be close to someone in a way that is not performative or transactional but simply honest.
Her scent fills my lungs. Vanilla sugar. Frosted roses. The fragrance of an Omega who chose my chest over an empty pillow and trusted me enough to fall asleep before I could prove I deserve it.
I close my eyes.
The apartment is warming. The heater hums through the vents with a steady, drowsy rhythm that blends with Mae's breathing and the distant silence of a campus asleep beneath a winter sky. The cold is retreating, chased from the room by the combination of mechanical heat and shared body warmth, and the blanket around us holds the temperature close, turning the narrow twin bed into a pocket of comfort that the rest of the apartment cannot touch.
I should overanalyze this. Should catalogue the risks and the complications and the hundred reasons why an Alpha with my track record has no business being this close to an Omega this vulnerable.
But I am tired of overanalyzing.
Tired of calculating exit strategies before I have fully entered the room. Tired of treating intimacy like a chess match where every move is evaluated for its potential to cause damage. Tired of being the man who leaves by morning because staying requires a courage I convinced myself I did not possess.
Mae makes me want to stay.
Not because of the jersey or the way it clings to her body or the bare legs or the biological pull that every Alpha feels toward an Omega in close proximity. Those elements exist, undeniably, humming beneath the surface with a heat I am choosing to acknowledge rather than act on.
But the wanting runs deeper.
She makes me want to examine the parts of myself I have been avoiding. The insecurities I masked with bravado. The loneliness I drowned in noise. The capacity for tenderness that I buried so deep I forgot it existed until a girl with freckles like constellations asked me to cuddle and I realized I had been waiting my entire life for someone to ask.
She makes me want to explore more about myself.
CHAPTER 28
What's Ours
~MABELINE~
Class ends with the kind of collective exhale that only happens when an entire lecture hall has been held hostage by a professor who does not believe in ending on time.
I shove my notebook into my bag, zipping it with the efficiency of a woman who has mastered the art of the five-second exit, and join the stream of students flowing toward the double doors. The hallway is already a disaster. February has transformed the campus into a Valentine's Day fever dream, every available surface draped in red and pink decorations that the student council has been installing with the manic energy of elves assembling a holiday workshop. Paper hearts dangle from the ceiling on fishing line. Glittered banners span the corridor between doorframes. A life-sized cardboard cutout of a bear holding a rose has been stationed near the water fountain, and someone has already drawn a mustache on it in Sharpie.
The dance is approaching and the campus is losing its collective mind.
I spot Sage near the exit, her dark hair pulled into a high ponytail that swings with each step, flanked by Jace on her left and Archie on her right. The three of them are geared up,gym bags slung over their shoulders, clearly headed to their off-campus rink session. Sage catches my eye and waves, her grin bright and warm even from twenty feet away.
I wave back.
"Have a good practice!" I call, weaving between two students who are attempting to hang a banner that reads BE MINE OR BE GONE, which feels aggressively honest for a university-sanctioned decoration.
"Come join us next time!" Sage shouts over her shoulder as Jace holds the door for her and Archie. "Archie is learning crossovers and it is the funniest thing you will ever witness!"
